Raising and matching in Pharasiot Greek relative clauses: A diachronic reconstruction

This paper studies the structure and origin of prenominal and postnominal restrictive relative clauses in Pharasiot Greek. Though both patterns are finite and introduced by the invariant complementizer tu, they differ in two important respects. First, corpus data reveal that prenominal relatives are older than their postnominal counterparts. Second, in the present-day language only prenominal relatives involve a matching derivation, whereas postnominal ones behave like Head-raising structures. Turning to diachrony, we suggest that prenominal relatives came into being through morphological fusion of a determiner t- with an invariant complementizer u. This process entailed a reduction of functional structure in the left periphery of the relative clause, to the effect that the landing site for a raising Head was suppressed, leaving a matching derivation as the only option. Postnominal relatives are analyzed as borrowed from Standard Modern Greek. Our analysis corroborates the idea that both raising and matching derivations for relatives must be acknowledged, sometimes even within a single language.

The use of default forms in codeswitching

This paper examines the effects that codeswitching (CS) has on mood selection in restrictive relative clauses in the Spanish of heritage speakers (HSs). Spanish HS participants completed an online acceptability judgment task in which they rated monolingual (i.e., unilingual) and codeswitched sentences containing verbs in indicative and subjunctive mood in restrictive relative clauses manipulated for specificity of the antecedent. The results indicated an association of the subjunctive with non-specificity in monolingual sentences that was lost in the codeswitched sentences, although this effect was modulated by proficiency. These results are discussed in terms of the use of default forms in CS.

Deconstructing Stylistic Fronting in Old Norwegian and Old Spanish

Stylistic Fronting (SF) is usually defined as a special kind of fronting, where a constituent (or part of a constituent) which is not the subject is moved to a position that precedes the finite verb. SF is found in both Old Spanish and Old Norwegian. In this chapter we show that the two languages share several common properties regarding fronting patterns in embedded clauses, more specifically in restrictive relative clauses, and that in both languages, apparent heads and unambiguous phrases may be fronted. In both languages a fronted element may cooccur with an overt phrasal subject. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the phenomenon of Stylistic Fronting, suggesting that the original strong claims made regarding SF in Icelandic are idiosyncratic, and that the term Stylistic Fronting in fact subsumes several types of movement operations (Labelle & Hirschbühler 2017), some of which have none of the properties originally claimed for Stylistic Fronting in Icelandic. Furthermore, it appears as though the pragmatic effects of the fronting were similar in the two languages; fronting in restrictive relative clauses occurs to check an anaphoric feature (López 2009). The striking parallelisms between Old Spanish, a Romance language, and Old Norwegian, a Germanic one, invites further comparative research on similar syntactic phenomena in the languages.

Fossilized mistakes in Spanish relative clauses learned by Chinese students

This article demonstrates how Cognitive Grammar and Construction Grammar can prevent Chinese students learning Spanish from fossilizing mistakes in restrictive relative clauses at the A2-B1 level of the European Framework of Reference for Languages. To address this issue, first, relative clauses in Spanish and Chinese were contrasted and, second, tailored solutions based on Cognitive Grammar were proposed. Among the cognitive based tailored solutions, certain geometry forms, colours and basic mathematics metaphors were compared with syntactic characteristics such as noun order, subordination hierarchy or resumption. To elucidate the impact of such teaching methods, an experiment with 74 Chinese students was performed. The results indicate that the efficacy of the proposed materials is statistically significant and as such, the Chinese students avoid fossilized mistakes while producing subject, object and locative relative clauses in Spanish.

Syntactic and semantic aspects of supplementary relative clauses in English and Sōrānī Kurdish

In this thesis, I examine and analyse supplementary relative clauses(SRCs), also known as non-restrictive relative clauses. SRCs have received considerably less attention in the study of relative clauses than integrated, or restrictive, relative clauses (IRCs). The (surface) syntactic structure of the two types of relative clauses (RCs) is largely identical. Therefore, it is not straightforward to determine where to locate the difference in the interpretation between IRCs and SRCs.To address this question, I focus on two types of English SRCs: determiner-which RCs, and SRCs introduced by that. Determiner-which RCs can only be interpreted as SRCs. Previous HPSG approaches built on the generalisation that that RCs cannot be SRCs. Hence there is no HPSG analysis for relative that in SRCs. In this thesis I show the acceptability of the two constructions by the American native speakers and provide both structures with an HPSG analysis.I extend my discussion beyond English by looking at relative clauses in Sorānī Kurdish. I argue that RCs in Sorānī Kurdish share essential properties withEnglish bare RCs and that RCs, though Sorānī Kurdish has no equivalent of wh-RCs. I also provide Sorānī Kurdish with an HPSG analysis.

What verb-final and V2 have in common: evidence from the prosody of German restrictive relative clauses in adults and children

Theoretical accounts agree that German restrictive relative clauses (RCs) are integrated at the level of syntax as well as at the level of prosody (Brandt1990; Gärtner1998, 2002; Endriss and Gärtner2005; Catasso and Hinterhölzl2016; Sanfelici et al.2017) in both the default verb-final and the marked verb-second variant (referred to as iV2). Both variants are assumed to show the same prosodic pattern, i. e., prosodic integration into the main clause, and not unintegrated prosody, which would signal a sequence of two main clauses. To date strong empirical evidence for this close correspondence between prosody and syntax in RCs is missing. Findings regarding prosodic integration of verb-final RCs are not consistent, and research regarding the prosody of iV2 structures is very scarce. Using a delayed sentence-repetition task, our study investigated whether subordination is signaled by prosody in RCs in both the verb-final and the V2 variant in adults (n=21). In addition, we asked whether young language learners (n=23), who at the age of 3 have just started to produce embedded clauses, are already sensitive to this mapping. The adult responses showed significantly more patterns of prosodic integration than of prosodic non-integration in the V-final and the iV2 structures, with no difference between the two conditions. Notably, the child responses mirrored this adult behavior, showing significantly more patterns of prosodic integration than of prosodic non-integration in both V-final and iV2 structures. The findings regarding adults’ prosodic realizations provide novel empirical evidence for the claim that iV2 structures, just like verb-final RCs, show prosodic integration. Moreover, our study strongly suggests that subordination is signaled by prosody already by age 3 in both verb-final and V2 variants of RCs.

Relativizzazione e restrittività: alcuni criteri distintivi in russo

This work discusses issues related to the syntax and semantics of relative clauses in contemporary Russian. More precisely, the study explores some differences between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses on the basis of data drawn from the Russian National Corpus and, additionally, on the basis of native speakers’ judgments. It will show the occurrences of the relative introducers čto and kotoryj investigating the nature of their possible antecedents (animacy feature), the Case-marking strategy and the Resumption phenomenon, which has been tested in colloquial language. My observations appear to support the hypothesis on a relationship, in Russian, between the Resumption strategy (that only čto-relatives license) and the non-restrictive interpretation of the relative clause, if island-constraints are not present.

Is English resumption different in appositive relative clauses?

Resumptive pronouns are produced in English in unguarded speech in restrictive relative clauses and appositive relative clauses. However, numerous studies have found that resumptive pronouns in restrictive relative clauses are not acceptable. To our knowledge, no studies have examined the acceptability of resumptive pronouns in appositive relative clauses, despite hints in the literature that they may be more acceptable in appositive than in restrictive relative clauses. This article fills that gap. We found that resumptive pronouns were rated as more natural in appositive relative clauses than in restrictive relative clauses. These findings may be due to which currently undergoing a reanalysis from a relative pronoun to a solely connective word, as has been suggested in the literature. A small-scale corpus search also reveals that appositive relative clauses with resumptive pronouns are increasing in American English.